


His Light

by MU_I



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, star wars the last jedi
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Kidnapping, Obsessive Behavior, Possessive Behavior, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 18:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13059825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MU_I/pseuds/MU_I
Summary: Major spoilers for TLJ - if you haven't seen do not read





	His Light

**Author's Note:**

> So I can finally tag last jedi as a fandom which hopefully means this won't get taken down by administrators.
> 
> Never mind that I already have enough fics to rush me off my feet and keep me awake spewing copious amounts of word vomit. I just saw TLJ and this, this was born. 
> 
> This is a prologue of sorts that explores the Force bond forged between Ren and Rey, leading up to the confrontation with Snoke.
> 
> Since giving a proper summary would give away major spoilers, I'll include it here.
> 
> The same choice.  
> The same battle.  
> A different outcome.  
> The one where a person is still knocked unconscious by the lightsaber split. Only it isn’t Kylo.

He sensed her.

The girl from the forest, the unknown, should be unimportant scavenger who had split his face to the very cut the medical droid was at that moment fixing. He let go of a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding, her presence flowing over his flesh, soothing his rage, peaking his curiosity, filling him up with something he didn’t know he even still could, should, be able to feel. Her pull, her power, her  _light_.

He turned his head to the right, waving the droid off, and she turned her head too. She pushed her face straight and he felt compelled by some power to do the same, little invisible strings bringing his eyes to the front, demanding that he be her perfect mirror.

She was warm. Warm in a way he never could be. And then, as she too clicked jumbled pieces of puzzle together and realisation finally dawned as to who it was, the cold, the numbing, painful chill that was sweeping her senses every bit as invasive as her own assault, that warmth blistered tenfold into undeniable anger, the purest rage surging up through her muscles that coiled and twitched, begging to be set free. He had the distinct feeling she would have slapped him in his newly stitched cheek – or worse – had he actually been there.

Instead she just stared, lips parted to tiny huffs of breath as she fought to control those same warring emotions, fear, hate, no stronger than hate; loathing, he could feel in her so damn well. And more than anything he yearned to stretch a hand across her own cheek, feel her heat spike as he held her, bathumps of mortality spiralling out of control as gasps jumped free of that plush, plump mouth. She was untrained, unlike him, and it would be laughingly simple to peel back those layers, strip her of that pretence of hate and expose her for the frightened lost little girl she was.

But he just stared. Because no alarms had blared, no frantic call from Phasma or Hux had assaulted his ears stating a security breach and demanding his presence to eradicate it. It was impossible that she was there, in front of him with that little treacherous tremble to her shoulders and the slightest hitch to her throat because she hadn’t yet learned how to truly control fear. Her eyes betrayed her most of all, the previous surprise found in them quickly flashing her detest. And he realised, then, that she wouldn’t just satisfy such feeling with a simple slap. No, she would kill him. And he wondered, briefly, if this was because of Han. Or whether it was just the reaction of a scared child lashing out at the monster lurking in her closet.

Silence followed, an awkward, clumsy kind as both of them tried to figure the other the hell out. Her little face quivered, bright eyes at war with each other, terrified and hating, so much hate reflected in their impossibly brown spark, all at the same time, and in it he could sense she was as stunned, as confused as he was. They remained, both just staring at the other, neither seeming to be able to do much of anything else.

And then she moved.

Perfectly fluid, breaking their parallel as hands leapt for the blaster at her side, the blaster that  _should have cleft open his side and left him dead, a broken burnt out corpse left for Hux to sneer over when it was eventually found, alone and abandoned in the bay, the great Kylo Ren felled by a nameless Jakku–bred sand brat._ Except breath still left his lips, his eyes still glowed to life and his hands reached, pulling at cleanly woven fabric for a wound that wasn’t there.

He rose, practically falling out of the chair and stumbling over the tiles and she did too, both of them returning to the trap of perfectly in sync actions, each of them running from their respective rooms to something wider, he almost skidding across the sheen of polished floor in his haste to find her, hoping that if he were fast enough he might be able to spot a glimpse of those tantalising mocha strands before they disappeared back down their rabbit hole.

Both of them stopped, whirling to face the other, their opposites a gruesome reflection of their self, like standing in front of some wildly distorted funfair mirror.

If she was the first to move than he was the first to speak, pushing a hand up and in front as if to clutch around her pretty little neck, so fragile that he could simply reach out and  _snap it,_ ordering in a booming voice belaying his true strength in the Force.

**“You will bring Luke Skywalker to me.”**

He pauses, swallowing as he pulled his hand back, raising it just above his head as he realised it hadn’t worked, a slow flush of embarrassment creeping into his features before he reined it back. She had resisted, she had refused, refused him just as she had in the interrogation chamber when she had wormed her way past his defences and into his mind. His thoughts raced, each swollen with frustration and anger. Why hadn’t it worked? Why did she still refuse? Why did she test him and spit in his face and call him snake? Why was she able to do this when she could so barely handle a lightsaber-

“ **You’re not doing this**.” He realises, the epiphany slowly dawning across his face. And still,  _she just stared._ “ **The effort would kill you.”**

His words were arrogant but the truth. The little girl he had met, had held against his chest slumped and unconscious after he had left her that way could never pull off such a feat. The act would simply burn the little bird out until she was nothing but a shell and then even that too, festered and rotted and flew away.

He turns, looking behind his shoulder as if expecting to see some magnificent spectacular view designed surely, to steal his breath away, instead finding only the Supremacy's rather plain in comparison corridor, the only rarity in wildlife the occasional trooper patrol hurriedly making their way past, nearly sprinting in their urgency to see the wonder of the next turn in the maze of the ship’s corridors, not slowing in their stomping until they’re away around the corner and his sight.

“Can you see my surroundings?” he questions, suddenly curious, if anything. He has to know, has to work out what was going on, whether she had some great advantage over him and if so how. But she doesn’t answer his question, would never do anything of the sort for him so easily. And instead of a polite reply he is met with only rage.

“You’re going to pay for what you did.” She hisses, interrupting him. Rude and untrained, spirited as always. Grinding her teeth into the expression the little bird pulled off so well. And there was the little Rey he knew, fluttering her wings and singing her same old song.

“ **I can’t see yours.”** He finishes, speaking as if she’d never opened his mouth and spat her tiny, insignificant flames at him. “ **Just you.”**

And it was easy to see her.  The Light that filled her, practically flowing out of every pore in her sun-kissed skin, forming a halo of blue haze that hugged her form.

“ **But wait.”** He pauses, because there is something new, something that isn’t distinctly Rey and fills him with a different urge, a new war of emotion rising up to take arms as their connection ripples, that impossibly blue, so blue he knows one look and he’ll drown in its ocean, never to escape blue, suddenly no longer alone. And if it is life then its companion is dying, cold and hardened, its colour a diseased sort of grey.

**“There’s something else.”**

A noise. Something like a door slamming open or shut. And her small head whipped backwards, eyes bulging a little wider and heart hammering a new speed against her chest. And suddenly there is so much rage in him, but it’s not hers, it’s all his, the new invader goading all those hair-thin, one-shot-snap tripwires as all thoughts, common sense and calm self-destruct.

**“Luke.”**

He drags the name out across his tongue, practically spits it between them. He feels her worry, her fear, no her  _terror_ that the old coot would find out exactly what his  _newest apprentice hopeful_ was up to, that she’d been not just conversing with the enemy, but projecting to one of their main big bads.

Her eyes have left his and for a single moment he is overcome in the rage that she would spurn him for someone else. The anger builds and builds, threatening to rise and spew forth – and he knows that the next patrol is scheduled two minutes and fifty three (fifty two, fifty one, fifty-) seconds from now.

And then she and whatever had connected the two of them, was gone.

And if the next trooper patrol arrive to report no security issues, one minute and seventeen seconds late in their rounds because they opted for a new and improved route, it is nothing to Kylo. And in his opinion the monotonously black walls needed some new decorations anyway.

…

**“Why is the Force connecting us? You and I?”**

It’s an honest question that he needs to know, has to know, because why, why have the two of them even something so ridiculous as  _force bonded?_ But she doesn’t answer, of course she doesn’t answer and he almost laughs at himself for expecting anything other than the

“Murderous snake!”

That instead spits out of her lips, as laden in venom as the glare it is offered up with.

“You’re too late, you lost. I found Skywalker.” She brags, throwing her chest out proudly and growling, all that rage, rage at him, rage at the First Order and oddly enough rage at Skywalker for not being such the hero she had expected, simmering beneath the boast. Her emotions are still so awfully, painfully apparent and she’ll have to learn, he’ll have to teach her, just how to control them. They make her entirely too easy to read.

 **“Did he tell you what happened? The night I destroyed his temple.”**  Kylo elaborates, ignoring the insult because he has heard worse, from her and others, and will do again. And she takes the sharpest not quite growl breath and glowers like ignoring the slur is worse than any of the deeds he had committed to earn it.  **“Did he tell you why?”**

Another honest question. Another dishonest answer.

“I know everything I need to know about you.”

 **“You do?”**  his voice quirks and he can barely hide a laugh, can’t stop the corners of his lip ticking up in a curve that might even have been a smile. Though she would probably argue it was a sneer, every bit as obnoxious as the rest of him.  **“I don’t think you do.”**

And he is smiling now. And when was the last time he felt joy – not the fake kind of enjoyment he manufactured to his lips whenever on a mission and burdened with purpose, but real joy, the almost manic sickle stretching his face for the first in a very, very long time genuine. A fact he is painfully aware of because whenever did his only happiness come from a wannabe jedi rebel scum playing hero?

 **“You have that look in your eyes. From the forest.”**  And she does. She looks like she wants to kill him. But this time there is no blaster fire, no searing pain racing through his veins, protesting that his body should be shot and smouldering, and she is just glowering, petite form shuddering tremors as it tries to contain the brutal murder she desires. If looks could kill then he would be long dead on a nameless planet with a worthless master but they cannot and so he lives, no matter how much she may wish the opposite, and so he continues.

**“When you called me a monster.”**

“You are a monster.” She lifts her head proudly and snarls. And there is that spirit, that temper. If he is the horrific shadow that steals its way in the night then Rey is the sun, bright and vibrant, full of life with enough fire to torch anyone foolish enough to stray too close.

He steps forward, face brought a little closer into the light, his voice a harsh ring to it.  **“Yes I am.”**

She’s taken aback. Surprised by his admittance of it. Her cherub face shows it, plates of doey-eyes doubling their size as the words register. And then she’s gone, as abruptly as before.

Except this time he reaches up to his face, dragging his glove through the tangled locks of his hair and when he takes it away again there are fresh dewdrops in his palm and the air tastes distinctly salty.

…

She stops walking – where had she been walking? – not even looking up before she is gruffly muttering “I’d rather not do this now.”

And he shares her sentiment, truly wishes that whatever had thrown their two paths together had chosen a different time, one where he was not quite so…exposed.

“Why did you hate your father?”

She speaks first, this time. But her question sputters off as he turns and the slight flush of embarrassment hidden away in his cheeks at being caught ay such a state is nothing compared to the crimson spreading across hers as her eyes trace his chest, the lines of power woven into the slab, totally bare and ever so slightly damp to a thin line of sweat that leaves the skin positively glistening.

“Do you have something, a cowl or something, that you could pick on?” Her words tumble out of her mouth, singing to that same chord of anger but there is something else and he can feel it, she is indignant and embarrassed and for once averting her eyes, scuffing them along the ground with new interest as if wherever she stands and whatever she finds in it is utterly fascinating.

He doesn’t dignify her with an answer, hands her her own medicine and remains quiet so she just blusters on, his lack of response only fuelling the rage in her mission to provoke it as her chin juts, and she swallows, dignifiedly (or with as much dignity as anyone could muster when staring at your most hated enemy half nude) lifting her gaze from her boots and back to his face, holding it with the same kind of steely determination she approached every other task he had seen her in.

“Why did you hate your father, give me an honest answer!”

Still he holds his silence, watching, waiting, curious as to know what she will do. Such a little spitfire is his Rey, and he blinks, swallowing suddenly, wondering exactly when the scavenger came to be thought of as his. But she is, his Rey and now that he has decided this nothing will sway him from the knowledge. Not Phasma, not Hux, not even Snoke. The Force bonded them for a reason. Rey is his and his alone.

“Your father loved you!” She continues to spit, lines of eyes all crinkled up and voice strangled, near tears now. “He gave a damn about you!”

“I didn’t hate him.” Kylo confesses, truthfully, in a way that even he is taken aback. It is not often for him to wax any kind of positive over Han Solo.

“Then why?”

Her voice practically screams, gnawing away at his insides, ripping away his carefully planned, meticulously constructed walls like they were papier mache and worming its way into his head like it had, like it always did, until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lie, not to her, never to her.

 **“Why what?”**  he prompts, rumbling it as she trembles, forcing herself to meet his gaze, so determined to keep it until he breaks the stare, even though she was the one so reluctant to talk earlier.  **“Why what?”** He repeats, glaring, daring, daring her to “Say it.”

Say it say it say it-

Her neck, tiny, bird-like, snappable neck twitched as she swallows, taking a deep breath. “Why did you- why did you kill him?” She finally chokes out. Her voice is unable to hold and cracks, descending into a sob at the question’s end. “I don’t understand.”

 **“My parents threw me away like garbage.”**  He explains matter-of-factly, not caring to add any emotion to his tone.

“They didn’t.” she argues.

“They did.” He corrects softly back.  **“Yours too. It’s your greatest weakness. Looking for them in what? In Han Solo, now in Skywalker. Did he tell you what happened that night?”**

“Yes.” She growls. But it’s a lie and both of them know it.

“ **No.** ” It's her lie and he calls her out on it. And then he tells her something he’d never meant to, never wanted to, that he shouldn’t have, that she’d never believe. Not coming from her bedtime story monster Kylo Ren.

“He’d sensed my power. As he senses yours. And he feared it.”

She doesn’t say anything when he tells her his master tried to kill him, how he crept into his room while he was sleeping and would have plunged the saber, the saber so very like the one hung at her hip, through his chest, the coward's way out, when he was sleeping. But then he didn’t expect her too, and her just listening, without blowing up in his face that he’s lying, that’s more than he ever thought he would get from her.

“Why Han?” her voice is so small after that he almost doesn’t hear it.

“Let the past die.” He answers instead, speaking softly, gently, even  _lovingly_. “Kill it, if you have to. It is the only way to become what we were meant to be.”

She looks at him, then. Eyes wide and lips slightly parted in a puppyish kind of pout. She blinks, as if she’s more surprised at herself listening than him for talking, once, twice, thrice. Then she is gone and he alone in his chambers once more. It is only when she is silent, not talking, not yelling, not so incessantly demanding to know why, that he realises he misses her noise, her warmth, her  _light._

…  

Her hands are not like others’. He had held a girl’s hand, once, marvelled at the smoothness and cleanliness of it all. Rey’s hand is neither smooth nor clean, it is rough and calloused, scrubbed by a thin layer of dirt and sweat, the palm rugged to her days spent living rough, each line, wrinkle and blemish a story of another scavenger’s day fighting for survival on Jakku. It is also warm, so warm, and he finds himself wanting nothing more than to throw himself into her chest and have both those arms around him, holding him, because if this is just the warmth of one hand, enough to stave off some of his fears and burdens and the world-weary stresses he thought never-ending, than surely both will bring him something that could even be called comfort.

Her eyes, before so filled with concern and fright, unsure as that hand slowly drew out from the blanket swaddling her sodden form, now glisten to the same understanding he feels, because he is not what she was expecting either and she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t flinch back like she thought he was the monster she so often called him out as. And he smiles because he knows. 

His Rey is his. And she will come to him. He just has to be a little more patient.

And it is then, as their eyes are meshed together just as tightly as the hands grasping like the other was their lifeline, that Skywalker bursts in and rips her from his side.

 …

He feels a quiver of something, excitement, fear,  _trepidation?_   feelings that build an alien weight on his shoulders, a tiredness not normally felt, as the box descends. Her presence, her warmth washing over him as it always did whenever she was near.

His fingers scratch awkwardly at an inner thread loose in the sleeve of his robe. He is barely able to keep his composure, to stop himself from sprinting forward and tearing her out of the giftbox she had so kindly offered herself up in.

His mouth is threatening to break out into a full grin and his eyes, so long dull and bored, have come to softly glow alive.

Because she was finally here.

The people of the universe, no matter which side they took, First Order or Resistance, recognised the importance of the sun, acknowledged that each planet was just a drop in an ocean of many that circled the burning ball of gas that provided that particular puddle life.

He was orbiting her, just as each of those tiny specks of dirt around their own suns, spinning round and round, no matter how violent he spun or sped his pace never to escape her pull, her gravity that kept him bound to her.

She was his light. His life. His warmth.

And he was determined never to let her go.

 


End file.
